Defining and Associating Attributes

Attributes are site-specific or project-specific characteristics that you define for your testplan and assign to test descriptions or group descriptions. They are used to categorize tests, so that you can then reference them as a group. The benefit of using attributes is that they can be incorporated into queries, allowing you to mark and run testcases in a testplan based on criteria that you set. Attributes can also be used as a means to categorize report data.

Attribute Names are limited to 11 characters and cannot have spaces. They are not case sensitive.

Note You may rename any attributes, including the default attributes. However, renaming attributes does not update those attributes that are already in use in existing testplans. If you have existing testplans renaming attributes may result in orphaned attributes in those testplans.

Attribute Valuesare the values that have been assigned to a specific attribute. For example, the Component attribute may have the values Place Order, Billing Information and OnLine Receipt. The developer attribute may have the values Joe, Peter and Sally.

Where are the attributes stored?

Attribute data, as well as queries, are stored by default in the testplan initialization file, testplan.ini, located in the SilkTest installation directory. The default file can be changed. For information about initialization files, see the online Help.

Defining values for default attributes

In the following exercise, you will define values for the default attributes.

Attribute

Specifies

Category

The type of testcase or group of testcases. For example, the testcase might belong to a category called Negative Tests or Smoke Tests.

Component

The name of the application modules to be tested.

Developer

The name of the QA engineer assigned to develop the testcase or group of testcases or the name of the software engineer responsible for the feature being tested.